Outside Mullingar at McAninch Arts Center

Daily Herald - Highly Recommended

"...It's easy to laugh at the stubborn grudges and silly superstitions that threaten a long-game love match in "Outside Mullingar." Yet this 2014 romantic comedy by John Patrick Shanley ("Moonstruck," "Doubt") doesn't pull dramatic punches when it comes to long-standing battles between neighbors, aging parents and their grown children."

Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...For fans of a certain Irish dramatic sensibility-gallows humor, spirituality, gloomy weather-there's no better American author than John Patrick Shanley. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Doubt: A Parable, Shanley, now in his late sixties, has regularly churned out dramas in recent years, including 2014's Outside Mullingar. Much lighter-hearted than Doubt, this story about a slow-rolling romance between people pushing middle age has now arrived at Buffalo Theatre Ensemble in Glen Ellyn under the direction of longtime Chicago director Steve Scott. Bearing his trademark attention to emotional nuance, the production is both sweet and hilarious."

Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended

"...At its core, theatre is all about story and the human spirit. Sometimes the story allows that spirit to be chewed up and spat back out, tearing our souls apart with it. But sometimes, as is the case with John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, the story focuses on something that is brighter, something that lights that spirit with hope. Shanley, who wrote Doubt and Moonstruck, here finds that hope in the Irish countryside with the story of two lonely people whose absurdly slow-burning romance shows that no one should ever need to give up. Shanley’s deceptively simple but seductive (and very funny) Irish fable celebrates both the end of life and, uncommonly, the middle. No one is young here, everyone has lost someone, and two of the characters die during the play, but this is one of the most uplifting plays you’ll ever want to find."